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KCB Foundation Director Mendi Njonjo \/ HANDOUT<\/p>\nKCB Foundation Director Mendi Njonjo \/ HANDOUT<\/p>\n
For years, corporate social responsibility in Kenya
\nhas carried a credibility problem. Many initiatives arrive loudly and exit
\nquietly, leaving behind press releases rather than measurable change. Mendi
\nNjonjo does not evade this critique. She names it directly.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cA lot of people think foundations are just the
\nPR arm of a brand,\u201d says Njonjo, Director of the KCB Foundation. \u201cIt\u2019s a fair
\nquestion.\u201d
\nWhat she describes is reputational CSR: activity
\ndesigned to polish image rather than alter outcomes. \u201cIf you interrogate the
\nsubstance, it rarely tilts social impact or social justice in any meaningful
\nway. It has its place. But if you look at institutions that are actually
\nshifting conditions, corporate foundations have to move beyond reputation and
\ninto impact.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Njonjo, that shift is not semantic. It is structural.
\n\u201cThe work has to be grounded in corporate citizenship. In our case, the
\norganising idea is shared prosperity. If you are deploying capital, time and
\ninstitutional power, it should result in durable change.\u201d
\nThis framing underpins her attempt to reorient
\nhow corporate Kenya engages development. Shared prosperity is not treated as
\naspiration but as design logic.<\/p>\n
After more than two decades working across
\ngender, youth employment, climate and finance, her focus is clear: building
\nsystems that make finance usable, legible and consequential for African women,
\nwhile creating pathways to jobs, income security and dignity.<\/p>\n
A CALLING SHAPED BY SERVICE<\/p>\n
Njonjo\u2019s orientation toward public purpose was
\nshaped early. \u201cI always knew I wanted to work with people,\u201d she says. The
\nspecifics changed over time, but service remained constant.<\/p>\n
Her parents modelled it. Her father\u2019s work with
\nthe Kenya Red Cross and her mother\u2019s deep community involvement normalised
\nservice as obligation rather than exception. Though she trained in mathematics
\nand geography, humanitarian work ultimately prevailed.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the end of university, I was certain I
\nwanted to work in the humanitarian or development space. Looking at Kenya and
\nthe region, I felt called to do something that addressed real conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
That calling now translates into a simple
\noperational question: What actually shifts fortunes?<\/p>\n
\u201cAt KCB Foundation, we asked ourselves how you
\ncreate shared prosperity for the communities the Group banks or engages. The
\nanswer is education and employment. Those two determine whether people can
\naccess opportunity or are locked out of full citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n
WOMEN AND THE PRODUCTIVE ECONOMY<\/p>\n
Njonjo speaks about women\u2019s economic role with
\nboth precision and impatience. \u201cI joke that Kenyan women must have chronic
\nbackache from carrying the economy,\u201d she says. The joke rests on data. Across
\nagriculture, hospitality, informal trade and MSMEs, women are the dominant
\nparticipants. They are also the largest cohort starting nano and micro
\nenterprises. Yet they face layered constraints.<\/p>\n
Access to collateral remains a central barrier.
\n\u201cAdvancing a business requires assets. Land. Property. And this is where sociocultural
\nnorms stop being \u2018soft\u2019 and start being structural.\u201d<\/p>\n
Time poverty compounds the problem. \u201cThe idea
\nthat everyone has the same 24 hours is false. A woman\u2019s time is not equivalent
\nto her brother\u2019s or her partner\u2019s, especially when care work is unequally
\ndistributed. Time poverty directly limits women\u2019s participation in the
\nproductive economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
These constraints aggregate into the gender
\nfinance gap. \u201cThe capital shortfall for women-owned businesses is in the
\nhundreds of billions across Africa. If that capital moved, GDP gains of up to
\n30 per cent are plausible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The paradox is well established. \u201cWomen repay.
\nThe data is unequivocal. Lending to women owned enterprises carries lower
\ndefault risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
2JIAJIRI AND SYSTEMS DESIGN<\/p>\n
These insights converge in 2Jiajiri, the KCB
\nFoundation\u2019s flagship programme.<\/p>\n
Each year, roughly one million young people
\nenter Kenya\u2019s labour market. Only a fraction find formal employment. 2Jiajiri
\naddresses this mismatch through two linked pathways.<\/p>\n
The workforce development arm focuses on
\nreadiness. \u201cWe work to ensure young people can be employed, self employed or
\nbecome employers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The enterprise arm strengthens MSMEs. \u201cEarly
\nbusiness failure is usually about weak systems. We work to make enterprises
\ninvestor-ready, credit-worthy and resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scholarships anchor the workforce strategy. The
\nFoundation supports roughly 15,000 learners annually, making it one of the
\nlargest TVET scholarship programmes in the country.<\/p>\n
Placement outcomes are actively tracked through
\npartnerships with training institutions and counties. Financial literacy is
\nembedded throughout. \u201cBasic financial management is not intuitive. Separating
\nhousehold and business finances, managing shocks, keeping records. These are
\nsurvival skills.\u201d<\/p>\n
Women entrepreneurs are supported through the
\nKCB Biashara Club, which provides peer learning, coaching and mentorship.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe objective is straightforward,\u201d Njonjo says.
\n\u201cDecent jobs. Decent incomes. A labour market people can actually participate
\nin.\u201d<\/p>\n
LIVELIHOODS, CLIMATE AND JUSTICE<\/p>\n
Beyond enterprise and employment, the Foundation
\nruns Mifugo ni Mali, a livestock programme spanning species from bees to
\ncattle. It focuses on productivity, value addition, financial literacy and
\nmarket access, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions.<\/p>\n
Climate justice cuts across this work. \u201cThere is
\nno plan B,\u201d Njonjo says. \u201cThis is the only planet we have.\u201d
\nShe points to the employment potential of the
\ngreen transition, including Kenya\u2019s tree-growing agenda, but stresses unequal
\nimpact. <\/p>\n
\n
\n\u201cThose least responsible for climate change bear the
\nheaviest burden. When water is scarce, it is women who walk further to fetch
\nit.\u201d
\nExcluding women and youth from climate solutions
\nleads to shallow outcomes. \u201cYou end up with interventions that look good but do
\nnot address root causes.\u201d<\/p>\n
SCALE, AMBITION AND LEGACY<\/p>\n
Asked what she is proudest of, Njonjo does not
\ncite outputs. \u201cI\u2019m proud of the ambition. Of our refusal to be incremental.\u201d<\/p>\n
She values partners who share that posture. \u201cThe
\nbest partners do not want small outcomes for Kenyan people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Legacy, for her, is not personal. \u201cIt is about
\nbuilding systems that outlast you. Creating space for others to step in.
\nChanging conditions so people can exercise full citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n
If lives are measurably different before and
\nafter an intervention, that is sufficient. \u201cThat is legacy. Raha tupate na
\nustawi.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked what hope means to her, she answers
\nsimply.<\/p>\n
\u201cPossible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KCB Foundation Director Mendi Njonjo \/ HANDOUT For years, corporate social responsibility in Kenya has carried a credibility…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[5977,1427,5979,5978,5975,80,5976,100,101,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-8602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kenya","8":"tag-corporate-citizenship","9":"tag-csr","10":"tag-employment","11":"tag-jobs","12":"tag-kcb-foundation","13":"tag-kenya","14":"tag-mendi-njonjo","15":"tag-star-news-kenya","16":"tag-the-star","17":"tag-the-star-newspaper"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}